[Dublum]

With regards to your last point, it's true that the recruiter and candidate's objectives are loosely aligned, but it plays out a lot like the relationship between a real estate agent and client in practice, in which the best deals aren't always achieved due to effort overhead. Freakonomics did a pretty interesting piece on it. Youtube summary of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17jO_w6f8Ck

[fecak]

The real estate argument is made quite a bit and has some validity, but there are other moving parts. The recruiter is least aligned with the client to some degree, in that the recruiter maximizes their own revenue by increasing the cost to their client (to the benefit of the candidate).

[Dublum]

right, that's the aspect they address, it's the same for sellers agents. The issue is that if the agent (recruiter) has the option to increase the salary by say, 2000$, they see a small percentage of that, maybe 100$ worth? If it takes them 4 hours to negotiate that, it's not worth it for them to spend that time for a small gain, so might forego the opportunity. They might focus instead on getting the next placement, effectively increasing the $/hr they earn.

[fecak]

Depends on the recruiter you're talking to, but negotiation in most cases is done to get a 'buy' from the candidate. If I'm going to a client to get more salary, it is usually because the candidate won't accept the current offer (or at least says that).

Sometimes we'll negotiate just because the candidate wants to maximize the offer, but negotiation isn't usually as intricate or time-consuming as it's portrayed.

It does benefit me to close a deal quickly, but the easiest way to close quickly isn't by convincing candidates to take low offers - the best way to make a deal happen quickly is to convince the client to pay my candidate at or above market rate.

If candidate tells me $n gets their acceptance, the easiest way for me to close that deal quickly is to get $n+5 from my client - not to convince candidate to accept $n-5. And $n+5 also nets me more than $n-5.

The risk isn't the time spent in negotiations over a small difference to the recruiter's bottom line - the time is minimal. The risk is losing the deal entirely (and getting $0).